The Apprenticeship of Rhaga Venn
by Librarianbot
Summary: Three hundred years after their return, the Jedi are scattered by choice to avoid the mistakes of the past: a dozen different sects, all working to protect the people of the galaxy. On a tiny farm, on a distant world, a young boy awakens to the Force under tragic circumstances. This is his story. And the story of what it means to be a Jedi Knight. OCs in the post-Legacy era.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

When he was eleven years old, Rhaga Venn killed a man.

He did not mean to. It was done in ignorance, without understanding the action or the consequences. At the time, all that mattered was the man, red-faced with fury, screaming and shouting at his mothers, the mob at his back, growing louder and angrier, the noise of it, the pain it caused his family, burning like wild-fire in his head.

The man lurched forward, arm raised. Rhaga's mothers stood firm, defiant, angry, horrifyingly small. The man shouted and struck out and stars exploded in Rhaga's mind. His fingernails dug into his palms as he squeezed his fists tighter and tighter. Hurt and humiliation rolled over him in waves. He was incandescent with them. His nerves sang, his blood pounded against his skull.

They told him what he did later. How he screamed and the man leading the mob had been flung into the air, so high that there was no chance of him surviving the landing.

All he could remember was that instant of searing fury, the single burning desire to strike back filling every atom of his being, drowning out the world.

* * *

By the time the Jedi came, he had already run away.

The enormity of his crime drove him into the wilderness, far from the farms and the villages. He was desperately hungry, shivering with fear and utterly convinced that he deserved to perish. Nightmare stories about the Sith and the monstrous Dark Side swarmed and shrieked in his head. He almost wanted a mighty warrior to spring from the stars and strike him down. Only fear for his wretched soul drove him to hide himself.

He felt her coming long before she yanked him from the undergrowth and that made it all the worse. Some stories made you think the Jedi must have wonderful thoughts, bright like stars. Her thoughts were not like that. There was something awful and cold about them, like a mirror in the morning. If she were a light, it was a stark one from which there was no hiding.

She had come there seeking a murderer. She made no effort to hide that intent or to conceal the penalty for using the Force to kill. He looked up into her grim, weathered face, crowned with horns and dark, straggly hair, and knew he would be shown no mercy. Running would have been foolish so he did not run. Begging would have been pointless so he not beg. Instead he stood there and waited, swallowing his misery until it choked him.

He did not close his eyes when she ignited her lightsaber, and the golden blade filled the world. Absurdly, there was no heat. It should have been hot, he thought. Beautiful as it was, like the heart of a fire, it should have been hot. Yet it gave off no more heat than a distant candle.

For an age, he stared into it, wondering, distractedly, whether he would feel the blow. Somehow, that he was about to die did not actually matter.

The blade went out so suddenly it left him reeling, the thunder of its absence making him rock back and nearly fall. The Jedi's hand landed on his shoulder, a quick touch to balance him again. He looked up but she was not looking at him. She was shrugging off her dark coat to wrap around him, guiding his hands to hold it tight.

She stepped away across the clearing. "Follow," she instructed, curt, as if the word took more time than she could afford. "Follow."

And he did.

* * *

She took him to a planet that had no name for the simple reason that no one had ever bothered to give it one.

There was a vast mountain range on one of its continents. They arrived on a clear day and it stood out as a great white scar across an immense grey and green tundra. The Jedi guided her ship to land in the shadow of one of the larger peaks. When they stepped out, the air was cool and fresh, a sharp contrast to the dust and ozone that permeated the little transport. Rhaga filled his lungs, savouring the taste and the way it chilled him through the heavy clothes she had given him.

The Jedi had not spoken to him once during the flight and she did not do so now, just heaved a bulky rucksack on to her shoulder and set off. She obviously expected him to follow. Or did not care whether he did or not.

They climbed along a trail that was barely there, hacking through tangled bushes and fording icy streams. An hour passed, then two, the day sinking into dusk. As sunset ignited the horizon, they crested a rise and he saw a wooden building nestling in a rocky hollow surrounded by clumps of ragged trees. Another structure, little more than a hut, sat some way further up the slope. She led the way to the door and gestured over the locks. The door opened and she went in, again without saying anything to him. Again, he followed. The room was dark and bare save for a single worn table and a heap of mats. The Jedi laid her bag on the floor and flipped it open, taking out a lantern and a bulky cylinder that he thought must be a stove.

He closed the door as she lit the lantern, then hovered near the threshold, not certain what he should be doing. She unpacked more equipment – a cooking pot, several smaller bags, bowls. As he watched dumbly, she began preparing a meal, unhurriedly and with the deftness of one used to doing so alone.

Only once the stew was simmering did she finally turn to him, expressionless and remote in the half-gloom. For a long while, they looked at one another. He wondered what she saw and was afraid to know.

"You will sleep in here." The words were as curt and grudging as before. "I, through there." She waved to an inner door barely differentiated from the wall. "You will rise when I decide and sleep when I tell you. You will cook. You will exercise. You will train. You will obey instructions when given and ask questions when you do not understand. Do you understand this?"

He nodded, not trusting his voice. Her eyes narrowed but she nodded as well and gestured for him to draw some of the mats over so they could sit and eat.

Later, curled up on the floor in that empty outer room, he wept into his blanket. The idea of never seeing his family again had numbed him. The reality of it tore him apart. He wanted to run home and knew that was impossible. He wanted to be forgiven and knew he could not be. But at some point, deep into the night, his tears ran out and in the silence he half-felt the Jedi's mirror-bright thoughts dancing around his dreams.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

The training was harsh and gruelling and the Jedi gave him no quarter. She roused him long before dawn and did not let him sleep until the daylight was a distant memory. His life deformed around exercises and study. Long hikes across the stony landscape were followed by long sessions with ancient books retrieved from hidden compartments in the cabin's floor. She imposed order on his mind and showed him how to impose order on his body. He became strong and swift and alert. And he began to comprehend the Force.

She taught him to quiet his mind and to feel beyond the fringes of his own consciousness. He learnt to listen to the world and hear the song of every creature, every plant and every stone, to hear the chime of the stars and the thunder of atomic forces, gravity's waves breaking on a thousand, billion shores and the stirring of grass in the depths of a windless night. It was so vast and so all pervading that at first it overwhelmed him. It awed and terrified him in equal measure. But she guided him through the fear and and showed him to temper his awe with understanding. The Force flowed from life and the cosmos was swept along in its currents, but in the tiniest stone lay the power to divert those currents, to change the direction of that flow. Great events hinged on pebbles and motes of dust. A butterfly held as much power as a supernova.

Everything mattered. And nothing mattered. The paradox at the heart of Jedi teachings.

"Emotion, yet peace," she recited to him as they faced each other, cross-legged atop a hill of bare earth and scrubby grass, "Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force."

"All is equal," he replied, brow furrowed with concentration as his thoughts held a bead of dew in the air between them, "All is . . . unequal. Everything is the same . . . yet different. And everything deserves protecting."

She did not say anything and he half suspected he had said something stupid. But if so, she did not reprove him and the lesson continued until heavy raindrops began to splutter down around them.

* * *

A year into the training, she taught him to hunt. She showed him how to trace movements across the skin of the world and follow them to their cause. How to approach prey unseen and how to bring it down.

How to end life cleanly and without malice.

On the farm, death had been something that happened as a necessary part of rearing animals. No one dwelt on it, except when it came before its time. You accepted it, even if you did not like it. He had accepted it.

This was different. Feeling the big land bird's fluttering mind snap out sent a hollow shock through his body, the horrible silence all the worse because _he_ had caused it.

"Life feeds on life," the Jedi murmured, kneeling beside him as he hunched, shaken, over the carcass, "This is a fact. Take no joy in it but do not turn away from it. The death of another may mean your survival or the survival of millions. It may bring peace and an end to suffering. We face this. We recognise it. We accept it."

She helped him – guided him – in gathering up the bird, in skinning it, cleaning it and in taking its meat. There were parts you could not eat, uses to which the offal and bones could be put. Nothing was wasted – nothing must be wasted. Death must have meaning if it came by your hand. He knew that was the real lesson. Not the mechanics of it but the way in which it was done, the understanding of what it meant to kill.

The shadows of blinding rage and of the man whose life he had ended weighed heavy on him that night.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

By the time he was thirteen, the Jedi judged him ready to learn how to fight.

In truth, she had been preparing him for it for months. The training was heightening his reflexes and tightening his muscles, making him sure of his footing and aware of his surroundings. The hunts became faster, more complex, the aims harder than merely bringing the prey down. In time they began to hunt each other, a game that he had no hope of winning but that he pursued doggedly all the same.

The day he managed to snag at her sleeve, she demonstrated the basics of unarmed combat.

From then on, hunting and meditation were interspersed with sparring matches that left him beaten, bruised and determined. There were no named forms, no set sequences of blows and reposts – just attack and defence, ways of striking and ways of blocking strikes. He was expected to learn from experience, to know why he succeeded or failed, and, above all, to think while he fought.

As with the hunting, she wove the Force into the combat subtly. At first, it seemed as though she were simply drilling the reflexes into him. Gradually though, he realised she was showing him how to feel his way through combat, to predict, to respond before the punch was thrown, to follow the motion of the fight in such a way that he could control his place in it.

Not that it did him much good. Nine times out of ten, the sparring ended with him flat on his back or doubled over, the wind knocked clean out of him. The Jedi's victories were matter of fact. She displayed no frustration at his failure, just waited for him to get up and try again, or demonstrated new alternatives. She never changed pace, never hurried him on to something different or slowed down to let him catch up.

Should he have resented her relentlessness? Should he have found it harsh or overbearing and chaffed under her tutelage? The emotions were there. They hovered around his thoughts, creeping in when he was tired or frustrated with his shortcomings. Yet he was unwilling to let them blossom into tangible reaction. The forbidding calmness with which the Jedi treated him made becoming angry with her seem foolish and no burst of passion when fighting ever gave him an advantage; quite the reverse, the instant he let his mind and body become undisciplined in any way, she would effortlessly flatten him.

Patience and perseverance and the subtle guidance of the Force. That was how she fought and that was the only way he was ever going to be able to match her.

* * *

In the history of the Jedi and their teaching he found as much to discourage as inspire. The books and recordings spoke of a ceaseless cycle of decay, upheaval and rebirth – that this repeated across thousands of years made it all the worse. With all that time to look back and see what had come before, how could the Old Order have so completely failed to learn from its past mistakes?

She fixed him with a long stare when he asked the question aloud, until he shifted uncomfortably and began to think it was a foolish thing to say. But no, she folded her hands in her lap and nodded slowly, her expression growing more solemn than usual as she weighed her next words carefully.

"Success persists in the memory of many when failure has been forgotten. This is true of Jedi as of any other culture."

He frowned, digesting the idea. "Didn't they ever see it coming? They knew so much and could do so much – didn't they feel it in the Force?"

"Sensing something is not the same as believing it."

"They didn't want to think they could fall again?"

"Would you?"

No, he had to admit. It was a hard thing to face. But surely facing it, doing something about it – that was better than ignoring it?

A trace of sadness, the ghost of a wan smile crossed her face. "We do not always react to fear as would be best."

"Isn't that what Jedi are supposed to do?"

"Yes. And yet we can fail all the same." The sadness lifted and the stern serenity rose back into place. "Never forget that."

He looked up at her and what he saw there chilled him to his bones.

* * *

For his fourteenth birthday, she taught him to play Sabacc.

Why his teacher had a battered protocol droid with an advanced dealing skills package stowed aboard her ship, he had no idea. But there it was when he came back from the morning run, shuffling about in the cabin and fussing over the table.

The mats had been set up so that Rhaga and the Jedi could face one another. She indicated that he sit and the droid began to shuffle the cards, dealing them out with deft flicks of its hands. At first the interplay of luck and calculated deception felt strange and unwieldy after so long discipling himself. The more they played, though, the more he began to appreciate the rhythm and skill of it. To trust to fluke and the inability of the other player to hide their emotions was a far cry from letting the Force guide his actions and yet it was not entirely different. Ultimately, it was still about understanding other people and the situation they were caught up in.

He had a feeling his teacher never once lost control of the game. She put on a whole range of tells and twitches for his benefit, both obvious and subtle, rotating them and using them to manoeuvre him about. Her actual emotions were completely locked down and it was unlikely he would have been able to detect them even if he had been trying. Still, he thought he surprised her once or twice so maybe there was hope that he might someday be able to keep up with her.

He did wonder, as they ended the final hand and the droid began to pack up the cards, whether the whole thing had just been meant as another exercise. There was no reason after all that she would have known that it was his birthday and even less to presume that she would have done anything to mark it. Under the cover of moving the mats back to their correct heaps he glanced over, half thinking he might catch sight of some unguarded tell, some genuine give-away about what she had really intended.

Of course, there was nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

When he was fifteen, the Jedi took him to the top of one of the highest, barest mountains in the range and left him there with a single instruction: "Survive."

As Rhaga watched her disappear down the near-invisible path, he had to swallow a surge of fear and vertigo. For the first time since they had arrived on the planet, he was alone. There would be no running back to the cabin and no stoic helping hand this time. He looked around at the bare rocks and the few tenacious weeds poking through the snow, dazed that she thought him remotely ready for that kind of test.

But if she did, then he would endure it. That brought his snowballing fear under control and as he had been taught, he pulled it deep into himself, accepting that it was there and moving on. He reached out to the Force, feeling his way across the mountaintop and down the slopes, probing the contours of the earth and snow, listening to the stirring of the plants that made it their home.

'Survive', she said and so survive he would. He could not stay where he was: even if he could get his tent pitched there, the peak was too exposed to risk a night there. Since he could hardly go back the way they had come, he scouted a path in the opposite direction, down into the mountain's lee.

There were mosses there from which he took carefully judged sections for food and kindling and he filled his second canteen with snow to give him something to clean with or boil for drinking water. A scattering of roots dug with effort from the frozen soil completed the haul and as the sun set, he pitched camp on a broad ledge that curved into the mountainside. He found no fire wood so he risked using the portable heater, keeping a close eye on the power level and turning it off as soon as he could afford to.

In the depths of the night, wrapped tightly in his sleeping bag, he quietened his mind and opened his consciousness to the Force once more. This time, he did not try to focus on the immediate landscape, allowing himself instead to be drawn out into the wider eddies and undercurrents of the planet. The mountains rolled beneath him, their roots resounding with slumbering geological songs. Caves and underground rivers rang hollowly with the lilting chimes of flowing water and all that lived within. Plants, sluggish in the dark and the cold, curled into themselves, hoarding their life in their sap. Somewhere, a predator stalked its prey, a silver sharp mind in pursuit of a fluttering heart.

He saw every facet of the world and the unified whole. He saw the colours and the emptiness, as it was and as it had been, as it would be and as it might be. And he saw nothing but the insides of his eyelids, black on black in the dark.

Survive. A single, simple instruction. But survival was not an end in itself, even as a test of ability. There was a path to be taken through the mountains: a path that he was going to take; a path that it would be right for him to take. Those might not be the same thing and there were so many other paths that it would be easy to stumble from one to the other, but if he let the Force guide him, if he let it draw him along as he might let it guide his hand . . .

And then he knew. Not in any way he could describe with maps or distances and with nothing so certain as a destination in his mind. He simply knew and when the dawn came, he started walking.

* * *

He walked for twelve days, working his way steadily through the mountain range. On the twelfth day a storm blew up, whipping the snow into a fury and driving him into clefts and hollows to escape its teeth. He pressed on as best he could, half-feeling, half sensing his way up another rise, the ground beneath his feet and the Force around him feeling equally uneven. In the distance, over the wind's howls, he thought he heard something cry out but the blizzard made it impossible to be sure.

For an hour, maybe two, he fought his way across the mountain, not entirely sure any more whether he was climbing or descending. The cold began to numb him, eating through to his bones. It became hard to centre himself, harder still to concentrate on the path ahead. With an effort of will, he tried to steady his mind and catch hold of a pattern to the storm. It danced and flurried out of his reach and lashed him with fresh daggers, cutting at his eyes so that he had to press himself to the rock-face to keep from falling.

The rock-face that suddenly was not there any more.

His sense of danger kicked in a fraction of a second before his fingers vanished into empty space. It was just enough to stop him breaking his neck. He crashed down hard among loose stones, the abrupt shelter from the wind almost as shocking as the pain of the impact. The storm's shrieking followed him in, echoing ravenously through the cave mouth.

Gathering his strength and doing his best to drive the sound and the cold from his senses, he got up and lit his lamp. The cave did not look all that big at first. It was only when he reached the rear wall that he saw the narrow channel that cut deeper into the mountainside and twisted out of sight.

He let the pack drop, scarcely feeling the weight leave him. Pulling back his hood and fixing the lamp to his coat, he slipped sideways into the passage and started edging through it, knowing with complete and utter certainty that whatever he was seeking lay beyond.

The rock quickly closed in on him. Halfway through, he was almost certain he would become trapped. In a flash of horror, he imagined being pinned between the sides of the crevice for the rest of his life. Then the moment passed and he shuffled free with a grimace.

Only to find that around the bend, the channel widened and almost immediately came to an end.

He stared stupidly at the wall before him. Had he expected something more? Some astonishing space or terrifying pit to justify childish ideas of the wondrous adventures? Perhaps so. And here he was faced with rough, unremarkable rock. It was funny, really. To come so far to end up with nothing to show for the journey save exhaustion and hunger and a dead-end.

His laughter faded before it had properly begun. Because it was not just unremarkable rock: a dozen tiny crystals sparkled in the lamp light as he leant closer. No, not a dozen. Hundreds. And not so tiny either. They seemed to be expanding, until it dawned on him that the whole wall was a single formation and the glinting was not the reflection of his lamp at all.

He reached out and felt the heat of the crystals' luminescence burn his wind-chilled skin. Shapes swam in the light, fragmented and faceted, things he thought he should know, distorted out of all recognition . . .

Then, all at once, he was looking at himself on the day the Jedi had found him, pale and brittle and transfixed by the yellow blade thrumming a hand-span from his face. Had he really been so scared? All he could remember was a terrible, hopeless calm. Resignation, he supposed . . .

In the vision, the lightsaber twitched – and the Jedi drove it through his heart.

He jerked back in shock. The image broke apart, only to reform inside another part of the formation, his younger self again, lost in the wilderness. Except this time there was no Jedi to hunt him down and he saw himself swallowed up in misery and guilt. The light twisted and he was a grown man, gaunt and sallow with eyes full of lightning.

This time, he cried out and wrenched his gaze away. Another crystal pulled him in and he was back on the day he had killed to protect his mothers, the hooting of the mob ringing in his ears. He flung up his arms, lashing out with all his anger – but this time nothing happened and the man's fists fell again and again –

And in another crystal, there was no mob and it was just another day on the farm. Another, and the mob was back but at the sight of their ringleader striking Rhaga's mothers, they turned on him and it was triumph, not helplessness that swelled in Rhaga's chest. He saw himself grown strong and tanned, a farmer tilling his fields and baking in the sun.

On and on it went, one crystal after another drawing him into their hearts and showing him himself as he could have been or might yet be. Sometimes he was a champion, smiting darkness with a sword of sunlight. Sometimes he was the darkness, something hungry and empty and always scrabbling for more. Sometimes he was one of those caught between the two, struggling for a life free of extremes.

How long he was consumed by the possibilities, he was never quite sure. When he came back to himself, it was on his knees and from the pain when he tried to move, he must have been like that for hours. The crystals still sparkled and snatched at his attention and he had to fling his hands across his eyes so that he did not fall back into the trap.

No, he thought, taking a deep, shuddering breath. He would not be dazzled by might-haves and could-bes. Nothing he had done could be taken back and nothing that had happened could be undone. He accepted that. He had to. And whatever happened next, whatever he became, that was his decision. His past defined him but _how_ it defined him was still up to him. He could choose any one of those futures but if he lived in fear of the ones he did not like, he might as well seal himself up inside the cave and never trouble the universe ever again.

Slowly, he lowered his hands. Only a single crystal still glowed, dead-centre in the formation and when he looked into it, all he saw was himself as he was.

The boy who had killed in anger and fear. The boy who had chosen never to do so again.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

The crystal came away easily in his hand. He held it for a while, letting it shiver with his thoughts and lift the weight of his exhaustion. Pain ran from his limbs like falling water, though he knew it would take more than meditation to prepare him from the trek back.

Pressing the crystal into his tunic pocket, he slid into the crevice and worked his way back out into the cave proper, feeling none of the anxiety he had getting in. However long he had been entranced, it had not been long enough for the storm to die down. The wind and snow still danced outside, their frenzy cloaking everything within a few metres of the entrance. He tugged his scarf up to cover his face a little better. The cave sheltered him but offered no warmth: he would need to wrap all his blankets around him and probably use his tent –

He had just enough time to drop his hand to the knife at his belt before something huge barrelled out of the storm and bore him to the ground. Dimly, he recognised it as one of the feline predators that prowled the lower mountain slopes and wondered how it had come so far above its usual hunting grounds. But then the cat's teeth snapped together millimetres from his face and there was no time to think of anything but survival.

With most of his body trapped, he jammed the heel of his right hand into the beast's throat, driving its head back and up. It let out a frenzied howl and raked at him with its claws, tearing a gash across his chest. He gritted his teeth and pressed harder, until the cat was forced to shift, freeing his legs and letting him kick out.

In the precious seconds of freedom that gained him, he tried to fling himself to the far side of the cave – but the cat's hind legs tangled with his feet and he did not make it half way. Agonising fireworks went off in his shoulders as the claws slashed him again. His grasping fingers found the strap of his rucksack though and, taking a firm hold, he swung it with all his strength. The heavy pack slammed into the cat's flank and it skidded away with a yowl of pain.

Rhaga scrambled to his feet, ignoring his scratches as best he could. The cat leered and hissed at him from the other side of the cave. He met its eyes as steadily as he could, reaching out to it with the Force. If he could just persuade it to leave –

He was utterly unprepared for the wall of animal desperation inside the cat's head. It was in agony, starving and frantic with pain all at once. That was all the detail he could make out. The sheer intensity of it was enough to tell him something was serious wrong with the animal but it had no conception of why its body was betraying it. All it knew was that it needed to feed and that it had found prey, prey that it had wounded, prey that it could rip open and feast upon –

It sprang at him and he swung the pack again, catching the cat across its face. They cried out in unison, minds still intertwined, and the rucksack was torn from Rhaga's hands, the cat savaging it and flinging it away.

He darted around towards the cave entrance, slipping his knife from its sheath. Every instinct was screaming at him to get away, but with the storm at his back and his equipment lying in pieces, there was no way he could run and survive. He stared into the cat's eyes again and knew that it would not back down. Even if he had the understanding of the Force needed to compel another being's actions, it was so frantic he doubted he would be able to affect it.

The memory of a man lying twisted in the dust rose up unbidden. The power he had used then lay within him still. Tap into it again and he could kill the cat instantly. The temptation was there and as the animal growled and hunched ready to spring, he felt it keenly.

His fingers tightened around the knife and he listened, really _listened_ to the Force. He heard the cat's sinews tightening, the pounding of its heartbeat and his own, the blood pulsing from their wounds, inside and out, the storm that trapped them both. The past swirled away in the wind and the future hovered just within reach, tasting of death.

The cat bared its fangs and flew at his throat. In that instant, he knew the future, knew that one day he would look into his fate and it would be his death that looked back at him. But this was not that day.

And in one movement, he dropped and drove his knife into the cat's heart.

* * *

The Jedi was waiting for Rhaga when he came down out of the mountains. She stood outside the cabin, hands folded behind her back, for all the world as if he had been gone minutes rather than weeks.

He walked up to her, ragged, filthy and stinking, and shrugged off the tangled remnants of his pack with its cargo of broken parts and bones and let the heavy pelt fall with it from his shoulders. From its nest inside his tunic, he pulled the crystal and held it out to her to glimmer in the weak afternoon sunlight.

She reached out slowly, until her hand hung over his, not quite touching. The faintest of expressions touched her face, accepting and understanding, and she cupped his fingers in hers and folded them over the crystal. "There is food inside," she told him, gesturing to the cabin, "Eat and rest. In the morning, bring this to the workshop."

Then, "You have done well."

And in the morning, clean and rested, he walked up to the hut with the crystal in one hand and one of the bones in the other.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Rhaga had been training for five years before he met another Jedi.

He was meditating on one of the outcrops above the cabin when the ship landed. The shock wave of it passage through the atmosphere raised the hair on his neck. He smelt the sharp scent of propellant and hyperdrive coolant. His ears popped with distant pressure changes. And something deep within him echoed to the touch of another Force-sensitive mind.

It was a small scout ship. Small and old. He recognised the design from history records his teacher had shown him. It banked over the mountainside, landing gear unfolding. He did not rise to meet it. Breaking out of meditation for such a distraction would have gone against the whole point of the exercise. Besides, with the world reverberating through his body, he did not need to look to know what was going on.

Deftly, the pilot brought the ship down on one of the wider ledges, perhaps a quarter hour's walk away. Birds scattered from the noise, their harsh cawing rising as engines whined to a stop. The pilot's satisfaction at the smooth landing was a glint of sunshine among the dark clouds of animal panic.

The hatch hissed open and the Jedi sprang on to the planet's surface. Any doubt that it was another Jedi vanished in that instant. The Force was alive in them – like his teacher, they made no effort to hide that. Unlike his teacher, they flickered warm and vibrant, welcoming firelight far away from a fortress of chill reflections.

They cut an unhurried line across the landscape, clambering over scrub and rock with obvious pleasure at being in the open air. He – all at once, Rhaga knew it was a man – found it a relief after so long cooped up in a cramped cockpit. There was a sense of purpose behind the simple enjoyment, though. This was not an idle visit or a chance respite from the flight: he was there for a reason.

Rhaga's teacher was waiting for the Jedi. She stood outside the cabin, patient and remote. Rhaga could sense no surprise at the newcomer's presence – but then, he was used to her taking everything in her stride. And perhaps she had been expecting the visit. After all, it meant very little that she had not said anything. Maybe she simply wanted to judge his reaction.

The Jedi called no greeting when he saw her there, but his emotions coloured with delighted recognition and he quickened his pace. In a few short minutes they were standing face to face, two dark and slender figures far below Rhaga's perch. "Giyra," he heard the Jedi say, "it's been too long."

 _Come here._ The thought washed into Rhaga's head before he could hear anything more, scattering his focus and breaking him from his meditation as cleanly as a bucket of water to the head.

He scrambled to his feet, senses fading back to normal. He stared down at the Jedi and his teacher for a second, then hurried along the ridge. If the command was not precisely urgent, it was definitely insistent and he did not want to waste any time in obeying.

As a result, he made it to the cabin in record time and arrived to hear the Jedi saying, "Of course not. We simply hoped you would feel comfortable enough to tell us yourself. Whatever distance you feel you need to keep, you are still our sister. Any assistance we can offer is yours for the asking and – ah. The young man in question! Hello there!"

The Jedi had a deep voice that seemed several sizes too big for his slim body. He smiled easily and freely, the lines on his face crinkling up with the same good humour that radiated from him through the Force. As Rhaga got closer, he noticed that the man's dark hair was, improbably, streaked with bright red. "Yarly Gunn," he introduced himself, offering his hand to Rhaga, "Very pleased to meet you."

"Uh." Awkwardly, Rhaga returned the greeting and they shook. He noticed scarlet piping down the trousers of Gunn's black combat uniform, which suggested he was a Corellian. The lightsaber hanging at his hip was bright with polished chrome.

For a few seconds, they stood in silence. Gunn looked around, across the mountainside and up towards the peaks. "This really is a very beautiful planet," he observed, "I can see why you chose it." Then, suddenly, he asked, "Why do you want to be a Jedi?"

Rhaga stared at him, not quite able to grasp the question at first. His mind worked its way back to the crystal cave and the visions he had seen. After a moment, he said quietly, "Because I chose to be."

"But why?" Gunn persisted, flashing his teeth good-humouredly, "I mean, why did you chose this path? One can't simply become a Jedi because it is the best option at the time. What if there is a better option further down the line? We'd never be able to keep anyone on the payroll!" He chuckled at his own joke, but his eyes never quite left Rhaga's face.

Rhaga pursed his lips and frowned. His teacher was impassive: there would be no help this time. He was on his own with this. What was he supposed to say? No – that was the wrong question. This was not about being supposed to do anything. Gunn was asking for honesty, blunt and unforgiving.

Why did he want to be a Jedi?

His mind drifted back to the cave again but this time, it kept going. He saw the visions clearly, not just as faded memories but as sharp and real as the world around him. At once, at the same time, he was a farmer, a monster, a corpse, a champion, a child and so much more. They were choices, yes, but the closer he looked, the more he realised just how different they were from who he was right that instant. He barely recognised the boy he had been, much less the other alternatives. And the image he had of himself as a Jedi, the cool, calm warrior who could stop conflict with a word – that was just the same. Perhaps he held the seeds of it, but it was as much an exaggerated phantom as the rest. The only real difference was that it was better. Not just the better option, not something to tide him over until the next goal came along, but really, honestly better.

He took a deep breath. "I want to protect, not destroy. I want to learn, not ignore. If I must fight, I will do it for others. If I must kill, I will do it respectfully. The Force lives in me. I can't change that. But I can chose what I do with it. And I chose to be a Jedi because I want to walk a path in the light, not the darkness."

Gunn regarded him coolly, rocking back on his heels slightly. Rhaga shut his mouth with a firm clack of teeth and refused to look away. At length, Gunn smiled again. "The clearest paths are not always those that lead away from shadow," he said softly, "And there is more to avoiding darkness than walking where the light seems to go. But wishing to protect and learn . . . that is good, whether you are a Jedi or not." He held up his hands. "I wish you well, Rhaga Venn. Whoever you end up becoming. Now." Whirling, he clapped. "I brought a few exotic supplies with me from my ship. What say I whip you two up a better meal than you'll have had in years?"


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

"Does Jedi Gunn think your teachings will lead me to the Dark Side?"

Had he been in a less pensive mood, Rhaga might have felt a little triumph at making his teacher pause in her work, for however brief an instant. "Do you?" she reposted, not looking up from her book.

He set the pan he had just scrubbed clean down and turned the scourer over in his hands, thinking hard. "No," he concluded, "But would I know? Would you?"

A slight tilt of the head was all the answer he received.

Propping his chin up on his fists, he stared at the floor between them, at the wall, at the door through which Yarley Gunn had left some time ago to see what the night time held. It was hard not to notice that his teacher had not given him an answer to his question.

"Is he worried because you're teaching me in a way that other Jedi wouldn't?" he asked, thinking of all their many history lessons and all the many ways in which people tried to use the Force.

She exhaled gently and placed the book in her lap. "What is the Dark Side?"

 _That_ caught him by surprise, even more so than Gunn's question.

"Uh . . ." he began, then composed himself, licking the last lingering taste of spiced dumplings from the backs of his teeth. "Fear. Anger. Strong negative emotions. And selfishness. Extreme selfishness."

His teacher's scarred fingers tapped quietly on the cover of her book. "Fear can save your life. Anger can bring justice to enslaved worlds. Strong negative emotions are part of being alive."

Rhaga winced, seeing the shape of the trap he had put himself into. "I mean . . . allowing them to control you. Acting on them without . . . uh . . . without thinking of others."

She tilted her head again. "So the pirate who has never felt the Force stir embraces the Dark Side? The corrupt politician? The slaver?"

He wanted to say yes and opened his mouth to do so, and stopped himself. Haste battled consideration. Logic battled instinct. "I . . . no. No, they don't. I mean . . ." He did not know what he meant and trailed helplessly off.

His teacher laid her hands flat on her knees. "Those strong in the Force feel their connection to every living thing. If they strike out, they feel the blow. You know this. I know this. Every Force sensitive in the universe knows this." She closed her eyes. "To feel the pain of every blow you inflict _and to keep striking_. That is the Dark Side."

"Take every thought that was ever thought," Yarley Gunn said quietly from the doorway, suddenly _there_ as if he had always been, "and every feeling that was ever felt. Boil them down and simmer them off and you'll be left with love that can bend the stars, joy that can whirl planets from orbit and passion that would ignite space itself. And fear that pulls stronger than a black hole, anger that lights the sky hotter than any sun and hatred that would snuff out galaxies." The ghost of his earlier beaming smiles touched his lips. "Maybe it is simply that in the light, we know this and try to keep ourselves from being pulled apart by the extremes. Maybe in the dark, we want to be the one who pulls the extremes apart."

Rhaga's teacher did not look at Gunn. "Maybe we cannot tell the difference if we never see the extremes."

"Maybe," Gunn agreed with a shrug, coming in properly, "And maybe the key to recognising the extremes is to see the middle from time to time."

Looking between the two, Rhaga got the strong sense he was seeing the echo of a very old and very deep argument. Any speculation – or ill-advised questions – on the subject was cut off by Gunn setting himself down on the floor beside them. "We could all go to the dark," he said, half-closing his eyes and scratching at the stubble on his chin, "We could spend all night arguing what the dark and light are and where, or even if, the dividing line can be drawn. Far wiser minds than any of us have tried and failed to come up with definite answers. All I know is the evidence I see before me. So no, I do not think you are in danger of falling, Rhaga Venn. Not here. Not now. If that changes . . . well, we deal with that if it comes."

The hairs on the back of Rhaga's neck stirred slightly and he put a hand up to press them back down again. It could have been fear, a flash of premonition or simply uncertainty. By the time it fully registered, he was already swallowing the emotion, letting it fade into the rest of him.

If it came, they would deal with it.

"May I ask you a question, Jedi Gunn?"

The Corellian grinned. "I'd be very disappointed if you didn't."

"Where did you get your ship?"

"Oh . . . well, now, there's a story . . ."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Contact flashes bit into the crisp morning air, the whining hum of blade on blade drilling its way up Rhaga's arms. The world spun under his feet, whirling with every dancing step. He let his instincts carry him, as ever moving as a spark in a lazy up-draft, darting hither and thither around his opponent's storm-swift attacks. His crystal sang in the heart of his lightsaber, in the heart of the fierce white blade, in the heart beating in his chest.

Yarley Gunn was everywhere at once, sky-blue blade so much an extension of his arm that Rhaga could feel the distinction disappear as they sparred. This was not a contest of swords but of will and essence. The goal was not victory so much as understanding.

"Why do the Jedi fight like this?" Gunn asked, words striking below Rhaga's defences even as his left-handed grip allowed him to deflect the Jedi's physical lunge.

"To defend," he answered in a rush of air he could ill-afford to spare, "To protect."

"Then why like this? Why to cut and sever?"

No answer sprang to his mind and he was caught off-guard by a curving parry and nearly bowled over by Gunn's open hand, coming hyper-drive fast for his chest.

He bounded backwards, giving himself the space to regain his balance. "A lightsaber can block blaster-fire and cut through any restraint. It can defeat the tools the rest of the galaxy uses to do harm."

"Interesting." Gunn pursued him, not giving him room to manoeuvre. "Yet we can tear guns from their owners' hands and split chains with our minds. Why waste time with weapons at all?"

Bending around the assault, Rhaga slipped behind him, going for a broad cut. "Because then you just see the chains and the guns, not the people behind them."

Gunn turned him aside with ease. "But still: why a sword?"

Drawing a deep breath into his lungs, Rhaga centred himself in his surroundings, letting go of the distinction between his sword and his hand, the feel of the metal and bone, the clench of sweating flesh. He let himself roll into the hum and the song, let it flow into every cell of his body. "Focus."

Swinging with all his strength, he slammed against Gunn's blade in one stupendous blow. Waited for the crackle of meeting. For the Jedi to lean into the block. Then turned off his lightsaber.

Gunn pitched forward momentarily. Rhaga turned right around on his heel, allowing the older man to move past him. And reignited his saber so the blade stopped a hair's width above Gunn's right thumb, a fraction short of slicing down through the emitter it was bent around.

"A lightsaber is focus," he said through the white flame in his hands, "It is here, now. When it cuts, we know what it is cutting. Who it is cutting. We can't distance ourselves from that or forget. If we must fight, there is no barrier between us and the pain we cause."

The Jedi was still as stone, unmoving and unflinching. His eyes regarded Rhaga steadily, without malice.

His fingers twitched and his blade snapped out. "Not bad," he grinned.

Hesitating only a heartbeat, Rhaga raised his sword and turned it off properly. The emptiness and quiet rang in his ears.

"I don't know whether you will become a Jedi or not," Gunn confessed, "That is not for me to say. But I will tell you this." He lifted his gaze to where Rhaga's teacher stood, arms folded, expressionless. "You are your master's student from the soles of your feet to the tips of your hair." Throwing a companionable arm around Rhaga's shoulder, he laughed. "She never let me get away with fighting fair either!"

Just for a split second, Rhaga was sure he caught the dream of a smile cross behind his teacher's lips.

* * *

Jedi Gunn spent the rest of the day teaching him starship maintenance. His teacher had told him once that the power of the Force was insignificant in the face of an inability to repair one's equipment. Visions of his lightsaber failing at a crucial juncture or being stranded on a distant world due to technological error had him paying close attention to her lessens on the subject and he watched Gunn's work with the same intensity.

Some time after midday, the three of them ate their last meal together and Gunn said his goodbyes. He clasped Rhaga's arm and wished him well, promising that they would have a drink together when he was old enough to be allowed into the bars on Eskaton.

To Rhaga's teacher, he offered a half-bow that she returned and a grin she did not. "Farewell, Giyra. 'Til we meet again."

"The Force be with you," she murmured.

* * *

They watched the scout ship streak into the darkening sky, just the two of them again. The world seemed suddenly much quieter. Yarley Gunn's echoes were already disappearing into the tides of life washing across the mountains. Rhaga reached out for the ghostly footsteps, turning the feel of them over in his mind, trying perhaps to keep hold of some trace of the older man's exuberant presence.

His teacher laid her hand on his shoulder. "Everything passes. Teachings. Meetings. Friends."

Taking a deep breath, Rhaga let the footsteps swirl into the wind. "I know."

He felt her look down at him. "Not yet." Her hand lifted. "Come."

With one last lingering look at the sky, he followed her back to the cabin.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

Three days before his seventeenth birthday, Rhaga's teacher told him to pack his equipment and follow her to the transport ship. Neither task took long. His equipment, his spare clothing, his lightsaber – these were all close at hand and ready to be moved. And with the strength of six years training, the journey down the mountain was easy. They were at the ship in an hour, muscles singing with exertion. His teacher scarcely broke step, triggering the ramp and striding swiftly inside.

He followed, knowing without being told where to stow his pack, to seal the hatch behind them. The protocol droid stirred in its recharge bay, photoreceptors blinking as the cabin lights came on. A curt gesture stilled it and it sank gratefully back into quiescence.

The ship came to life, the engines coughing their way out of their long sleep. Rhaga slipped quietly into the co-pilot's seat, watching his teacher's hands play across the controls. He knew the launch sequences, enough to be able to trigger the autopilot and plot a hyperspace jump to the nearest inhabited world. In time, he could probably have mastered more than the basics. He wondered if this was to be another flying lesson.

With the slightest of jerks, the ship rose into the air and jumped towards space. In minutes they were above the atmosphere, angling away from the planet. He gazed through the view port at the grey-green arc, at once disconcerted by the thought of leaving and aware that the world was still, and would always, be with him.

They flew out into the star-speckled blackness, the planet dwindling to a dot of colour behind them. The void yawned around them, so empty of life it was shocking to Rhaga's awakened senses. Yet despite the quiet, he could still feel the flow of the Force passing through his body, carried on the starlight.

His teacher released the controls and sat back, closing her eyes. For a long moment, she said nothing. He waited patiently for her to speak, uncertain premonition earthing into the calm she had taught him.

"If you wish it, I will take you home to your family."

That was certainly not what he had expected her to say. His eyes refocused on the faint reflection in the transparisteel before him. It was a long time since he had properly looked into a mirror. In all honesty, he hardly recognised himself: cheeks hollowed by tough living; hair, grown properly pale with puberty, hanging in a roughly cut curtain down to the nape of his neck; mouth somehow sterner than he remembered.

He was not the same person that had run away from his family. And he was. His crime still hung inside him. Snared by teaching, snagged so that it could not twist his path, but still there. He could not imagine himself returning home, embracing his mothers, his brothers –

"I do not wish that," he told his reflection.

"What do you?"

"To continue my training. To learn more."

"You are certain?"

"Yes."

She opened her eyes and tapped coordinates into the navigation computer. Her hand rested on the hyperspace lever. Rhaga caught the tiniest flicker in the silver pool of her mind. Then she pressed the lever home and the universe collapsed into a tunnel of shimmering light.

* * *

Salintam hit Rhaga with the force of an ocean wave. The sheer scale of it, of hundreds and hundreds of people living and thinking in the same city – it was enormous and all inside his head at once. Stupidly, he clamped his hands to the sides of his head, as if that would in any way help him sort through the rush.

His teacher's thoughts brushed against his and he regained his mental footing. He let the wave break over him and stepped through to the other side, the voices receding below the threshold of his hearing, fading to a faint pressure that could no longer deafen him.

They were side by side at the top of the ramp, the pungent air rolling over them. The space port bustled and teamed, passengers and pilots rubbing shoulders with traders and pick-pockets. A few of the species he recognised. Many, he did not. Ships of every variety plied the air above and choked the landing pads. Speeders and swoops buzzed through every gap. All was noise, confusion and pollution.

Rhaga climbed slowly down to the ground, uncertain and unsure in the face of urban chaos after so long in the empty wild. Even with his thoughts under control, it was hard to find his balance in this new environment. He shifted the pack on his back and looked behind him. His teacher had made no move to follow him down.

"What are we doing here?" he asked, "What do you want me to do?"

"Survive," she said simply and shut the hatch.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10  
**

At first, Rhaga did not know what to do. He drifted away from the landing pad, the echoes of the transport's departure still ringing in his ears. Even shouldering through the crowd, brushing against their sleeves and feelings, he suffered a brief pang of loneliness and abandonment. This was not his environment. It never had been. Eleven years on a world where the biggest town was scarcely bigger than this space port, the rest up a mountain – what did he know of cities?

There was much he needed to learn if he was to do as his teacher had instructed.

As he slipped towards the entrance into the city proper, he narrowed his focus on to the immediate situation. Would he have to pass through some sort of immigration control? There did not seem to be anything up ahead. Instead, the crowd was just flowing out on to the streets. That definitely made things easier.

But what now? Having no money to his name was going to make it hard to live in the kind of place that ran on credits. He would need at least enough to acquire food honestly over a sustained period of time. The thought crossed his mind that this was just the situation that called for a working knowledge of sabaac, but since he had nothing to wager, that idea would not go very far. In the short term at least, survival was going to require gainful employment.

Now he just needed to find someone willing to give him a job.

* * *

Salintam welcomed visitors with open arms. Rhaga discovered this quickly as he passed rows of citizen information terminals and holographic guides. Beyond the walls, off-worlders were required to register with the planetary authorities and carry the appropriate documentation. Within, however, they were free to come and go as they pleased, which was easy enough in a metropolis that sprawled for kilometres in all directions, including down and up. Free trade was god in the city: as an important stop-off point before the long, empty stretches of the Col-pahd Reach on top of sitting at the intersection of two major sector-spanning polities, it was a haven for traders and merchants of all kinds.

In theory, this presented numerous openings for potential work. In practice, rather less so.

Rhaga scrutinised himself in the darkened window of an emporium selling objects of ill-defined and possibly painful use. He had to admit, his clothes were a problem. Not inaccurately, they made him look like a herder just come in out of the wild. There was little outward evidence of his training and instinctively he knew that advertising that training vocally would not earn him any favourable interest.

Looking like a farmer was not something he would have automatically assumed counted against him. Several long hours traipsing from store to store had shown categorically that it did. Besides, it was not just his clothes: he was beginning to suspect that his lack of any great height and the general wiriness of his body were not doing him any favours either. Clearly, the traders of Salintam expected a good deal more girth for their credits than he could provide.

Once physicality proved a problem, he fell back on skill. There were dozens of mechanics shops on the space port levels alone and it seemed like he had applied at every single one of them. Most turned him away with scarcely a glance. The few that did appraise him more closely asked, reasonably enough, for proof of his qualifications. Such assurances as he could give them were patently not enough and by the end, he was more or less talking himself out of the job on his own initiative.

On top of all that, he was being followed.

Methodically eliminating possible workplaces had taken him into the upper levels, to streets slung between the ever-rising towers. As he climbed, he had been aware of a constant presence at his heel. He first noticed it after finding no luck at a cantina on the corner of a busy crossroads and it had been flitting around the edge of his conscious thoughts ever since. There was nothing overtly threatening in the sense of whoever it was, yet its very persistence concerned him.

Who would want to follow him? He hardly looked wealthy enough to rob. Besides, pursuing him for hours without making any kind of move seemed beyond the realm of opportunism. But then what?

He tried several times to discern the identity of his tail, without success. Tracking targets through crowds was a great deal more complicated than tracing them through forest and brush. The constant shifting of the environment and the sheer variety of minds brushing up against his were going to take a lot of getting used to.

With a sigh, he drifted away from the store-front and across the walkway to the wall that separated pedestrians from the fifty storey drop down to what was nominally ground level for the city. Speeders whipped past at speeds that were not even nominally safe. Ozone and refuse hung heavy on the breeze, mingling with spiced meat and spacecraft fuel. He breathed it in, centring himself amidst it all. The Force was turbulent with complexity and contradictory emotions. It reminded him of the snowstorm, ever forming and reforming, patterns torn to pieces almost as soon as they were visible.

Or was it simply that he could not yet see the larger patterns?

The whisper that was his pursuer sounded closer. He could almost see the shape they left in the Force now. Going still, he kept his hands resting on the wall, his face pointed out towards the skyline. Let them approach. If this was the point they made their move, he would be ready –

A hand landed on the back of his shoulder. "Hey buddy!"

He spun, a hair's breadth from flipping his assailant over into the chasm. The twi'lek man beamed at him, grin full of slightly pointed teeth.

"You looking for a job, huh?"

Rhaga regarded him steadily, taking in the man's battered labourer's trousers, the sleeveless vest that hung loose and open to show off a slim, muscled torso and slender arms ringed in tattoos, his narrow face and the black bands tied around his head-tails. Instinct told him this was not the kind of person it was wise to trust. But his senses, the background hum of his feelings . . .

"Yes," he said, taking the chance.

The twi'lek's smile somehow widened, crinkling his eyes. "Try Kariz'lal's shop. Third level, Torma District." With his free hand, he produced a small printed card from a vest pocket. "I hear she's got an opening for an assistant and you look just the right sort." He pressed the card into Rhaga's hand, touched the side of his head in a jaunty salute and slipped effortlessly back into the crowd.

Rhaga blinked.


End file.
